Management Skills in the Pharmacy: Learn How to Communicate Better, Motivate and Manage Difficult Conversations

(2 Days – Tutor Directed Online Workshop)

Overview

There is no “one” perfect approach to managing people in terms of communicating, motivating or getting the best from people. Our approach needs to be sympathetic to our own personality and style, that of the person we are engaging with, and the context. You will lean an approach that offers the comfort of structure and guidelines but has enough scope for customisation and nuance.

Day 1 – focus on the core skills of coaching and advanced communication to empower and motivate others.

Day 2 – build on this foundation of coaching skills to tackle the harder conversations of both task and behaviourally based feedback. This workshop is interactive and practical in nature, to enable skills that can be immediately utilised in the pharmacy setting.

Course Content

Day 1 Tutor Directed Online Workshop

The aim of this day is to clarify what coaching in the workplace as a manager looks like. Participants will understand their role as a coaching manager and have the communications skills and structure to have more empowering and motivating conversations.

Day 2 Tutor Directed Online Workshop

The aim of day two is to tackle the trickier conversations. Using the coaching mindset and skills from day one to address task underperformance and/or negative behavioural issues.

Topics Covered:

1. Coaching and it’s benefits;

2. Advanced communications skills: from active to reflective listening, and from open to non-directive questioning;

3. The importance, and how to of positive feedback in motivation;

4. How to make negative feedback constructive and bring it from a one-way to a two-way conversation and more; and

5. Practice sessions based on real-time pharmacy issues.

Course Delivery and Methodology

Practical and interactive: tutor-led discussions, group and individual exercises, as well as role plays to allow for feedback on skills development and the ability to apply learning immediately. Learners will need a computer/laptop or a mobile device and a set of earphones/headset to attend.

Course Schedule

• Day 1: Tuesday, 24 February 2026
• Day 2: Wednesday, 1 April 2026
• Time: 10.00am – 4.00pm (includes a break for lunch)

Assessment

Participants who complete the course will receive an IPU Professional Academy Certificate of Completion.

Course Fee

The cost of this course is €450 for learners working for IPU members; or €750 for learners working for non-members.

How to Enrol and Pay

1. Go to www.ipu.ie.
2. In the top menu, click on “IPU Professional Academy” and then select Training Courses.
3. If you want to browse first, just click View Course to read the details.
4. From the Training Courses page, you can add courses to a shopping cart by hovering over the course you want and clicking Add to Cart. You will be able to increase the quantity at the Checkout point. You can continue adding other courses to the cart, or when you are done, click View basket on the last course you added, or, if you are viewing a course, click on the basket icon in the right-hand corner and click View Basket.
5. From here, you can increase the quantity but make sure to click Update Basket if you do so.
6. Please, make sure you click on the green button ”Members Login” and log on if you are a member, so the system will show the member price.
7. Click Proceed to Checkout when you are happy with your booking (s) and enter your billing and pharmacist details.
8. You can then scroll down to enter the student details. For example, if you are intending on booking one student on one course and then two students on to a different course, you will see three student bookings appear in the Checkout, since you are booking three slots. The name of the course (s) you have selected will appear at the top of each slot so you can enter the details of the appropriate student to the selected course. You would then repeat the same for the next two student slots.
9. After entering all the required information, enter your card details and click Place Order to pay for all of the bookings in one go. This eLearning course is available to purchase 24/7 and is placed on the IPU Professional Academy Learning Management System (LMS).